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Melted in a pool of lye.
A fitting end.
Not a trace left of them on the planet.
"Good," she declared, giving me a firm head nod.
"Good?" I asked, feeling my lips tease up just the slightest bit. "Thought you were anti-violence, babe."
"I'm against people using one another as punching bags, useless wars that only succeed in thousands of innocents losing their lives while furthering a political agenda. I'm against senseless violence, Reeve. Those men losing their lives after what they had done? There's nothing senseless about that. It tilted the scales back."
"Yeah," I agreed, not telling her that that was exactly how I viewed it as well, that I was maybe reading a bit too much into the fact that we both saw it the same way.
"Thank you for telling me," she said a long moment later after we both watched Charlie jump and glide - not fly, since his wing was still mending - off the top bunk to land a bit clumsily on the play stand next to Bing, putting his crest up, and flapping his wings at the much bigger bird, like he was trying to start some shit.
"He's seemed to settle in nicely," I responded, wanting to shift the conversation, having had enough of opening myself up for one day.
"Charlie was re-homed four times before I got him. He is okay with change. Where are the dogs?"
"Cy took them out in the yard. It's all fenced," I added.
"They wouldn't leave anyway. I have to feed Ford, and then I am getting my hands on you." My eyes must have betrayed my thoughts before her lips curled up as she took the kitten out, cuddling him to her chest, rubbing her nose across the soft fur on top of his head. "Unfortunately, I just meant to get more salve on you. You'll be better in no time," she assured me.
With her as nursemaid, I didn't doubt that one bit.TWELVERey"You know, don't you?" Cy asked four days later, the two of us being the only ones up in the compound yet. Him, because he just got off guard-duty. Me because five was not an altogether uncommon time for me to be up.
Things had fallen into a new kind of normal since I moved into the compound. The animals settled in. In fact, Bing and Frank loved the big room, loved that they could fly around it and really stretch out. The dogs and Charlie, well, they were eating up all the attention they were getting.
As for me, well, I wasn't allowed to leave for work. So I had to tell my normal clients that my dog sitting and house sitting services were suspended while I was on a vacation. I wasn't allowed to head out. In fact, it seemed as though none of the actual Henchmen left the inside of the building.
Lo and her people were the ones who came and went, bringing in supplies, changing guard shifts.
And Reeve, well, he was a lot better. His face was all scabbed over. The slight infection in his gum from the knocked-out tooth was gone. The ribs weren't making him suck in his breath when he moved anymore, but were making him take things easy still.
He was sleeping a lot.
Which I encouraged.
Sometimes, I slept with him.
When my mind would rest. When he would stay awake and run his fingers through my hair and down my back, soothing me into unconsciousness.
"Yes, I know," I agreed, rubbing Ford's head when he knocked it into my hand. "He told me the morning after I came here."
"Everything?" Cy asked, brows furrowed like maybe that didn't make any sense.
"Every really, really horrible detail. Why?" I asked when he looked all the more confused.
"He's never told me," Cy admitted. "Or Wasp. Not in detail. We knew mostly what the cops told us, what was in the papers. He never opened up about it."
No wonder he had such a hard time trying to heal, to cope, to move forward. He didn't let anyone shoulder the burden.
Not even his siblings who, by all stories I had heard, he was extremely close with. In fact, once Wasp got word that he had been beaten up, she ended a job early and was heading in our direction. I was both excited and a bit terrified to meet her. She sounded like a force of nature.
"This is huge," he added.
And it was.
I was the one.
The one he entrusted with that story, with all the ugly in it, with all the pain, and guilt, and anger.
Me.
That meant more than anything.
"Yeah," I agreed, nodding, letting the weight of that settle on me, knowing I could handle it. I was happy to.
"Incoming," Sugar said, coming out of the kitchen, holding up his phone at us. "They ditched their bikes after the drop and hopped a plane," he explained to our confused looks. "They landed half an hour ago. Knowing them, they'll be here in ten."
